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A small group of New York Apple Tours workers gathered at City Hall yesterday to protest the shutdown of their double-decker bus tour company on Wednesday. Meanwhile, hundreds of people with tickets for Apple tours gathered outside the company's Midtown office to demand refunds. Officials at Gray Line, another tour company, said they were accepting New York Apple tickets. The State Department of Motor Vehicles suspended the registrations of all 63 Apple Tours buses after a pedestrian was struck and killed by one of the vehicles last week. Jayson Blair (NYT)

MANHATTAN: NAZI GUARD CASE

Federal Justice Department lawyers asked an immigration judge yesterday to deport a Rockland County resident who they said worked as an SS guard at a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. The man, Michael Gruber, 85, of New City, an Austrian citizen who has lived in the United States for 44 years, was hospitalized yesterday and did not attend the hearing. The government said Mr. Gruber was assigned to the concentration camp at Sachsenhausen in Germany. A defense lawyer said Mr. Gruber had been forced to join the SS, had worked outside the camp, had not killed any prisoners and had committed no war crimes. Julian E. Barnes (NYT)

MANHATTAN: PROTEST AT GAP

High school students from the New York City region have formed an anti-sweatshop group that plans to demonstrate on Sunday at a Manhattan Gap store. The group, the Student Committee Against Labor Exploitation, said it would focus on Gap Inc., owner of Gap, Old Navy and Banana Republic stores. The students accused Gap of using overseas sweatshops, but Gap officials denied the charge. The rally is scheduled for 2 p.m. at the Gap store at 17th Street and Fifth Avenue. Steven Greenhouse (NYT)

BELLMORE: WOMAN KILLED

A Long Island man killed his mother with a pocketknife Wednesday and killed himself with a rifle after she asked him to move out of the house, the police said. The bodies of Frank Buttafuoco, 28, and his mother Edith, 55, were found in her home at 2184 Hillside Avenue that night around 11. ''She found out that he had been using cocaine again and asked him to pack his bags,'' said Detective Sgt. Robert Edwards of the Nassau County police. Charlie LeDuff (NYT)

A woman who had filed a successful paternity suit against Albert J. Pirro Jr., who is being tried on tax fraud charges, was arrested on Wednesday at Newark International Airport on an outstanding warrant from Florida. The arrest of the woman, Jessica Marciano, prevents her from attending Mr. Pirro's trial in Federal District Court here and possibly facing Mr. Pirro's wife, Jeanine F. Pirro, the Westchester County district attorney. The arrest warrant for Ms. Marciano was in connection with a past grand-theft conviction. David W. Chen (NYT)

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani yesterday defended the city's efforts to ensure the quality of drinking water from its upstate reservoirs, saying that a federal report had exaggerated the hurdles New York faced in meeting a deadline to upgrade sewage treatment plants and buy undeveloped land. The mayor was responding to a report by the federal Environmental Protection Agency saying that the city had fallen far behind in meeting the terms of an agreement laying out steps it must take to avoid building a $6 billion water filtration plant. Thomas J. Lueck (NYT)

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A state appeals court panel ruled yesterday that a divorced woman had the right to have her frozen embryos destroyed. The Camden County couple used in vitro fertilization to create the embryos. In March 1996, a daughter was born; the couple divorced in September 1996. The ex-husband had appealed for access to those embryos. In denying the appeal, the judges said giving the embryos to the ex-husband or to an infertile couple would force the woman to become a biological mother. Kushanava Choudhury (NYT)

CAMDEN: MURDER FOR HIRE

A man accused of killing the wife of a prominent rabbi in a murder-for-hire plot pleaded guilty to a lesser charge yesterday in an agreement that calls for him to testify against the rabbi and an accomplice. The man, Leonard Jenoff, 54, of Collingswood, told a judge he was paid to kill Carol Neulander, 52, the wife of Fred Neulander, a Cherry Hill rabbi. Mr. Jenoff, who pleaded guilty to one count of aggravated manslaughter, could get as little as one year and 11 months in prison or as much as 30 years. (AP)

CONNECTICUT

HARTFORD: HOSPITALS WERE OVERPAID

Four hospitals have agreed to return more than $9 million in Medicare payments from Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Connecticut in the late 1980's and early 90's, federal investigators said. Federal officials are investigating a scheme in which Blue Cross overpaid certain hospitals to make its own ledgers appear balanced and preserve its $3.5 million annual contract with the federal Health Care Financing Administration. The hospitals are the Hospital of St. Raphael in New Haven, Griffin Hospital in Derby, and St. Vincent's Medical Center and Bridgeport Hospital in Bridgeport. Paul Zielbauer (NYT)

LITCHFIELD: OFFICER TO APPEAL

A former New Milford police officer, Scott Smith, plans to appeal his conviction on manslaughter charges in the fatal shooting of a suspect in 1998. The suspect, Franklyn Reid, was shot in the back after a foot chase. Mr. Smith said he believed that Mr. Reid, who was wanted for failing to appear in court for harassment and probation violation charges, was reaching for a weapon. A knife was found in a jacket several feet from his body. (AP)

HARTFORD: COMMISSIONER SWORN IN

Arthur J. Spada, a State Superior Court judge, was sworn in yesterday as the state commissioner of public safety. Judge Spada, 68, succeeded Dr. Henry Lee, the forensic scientist best known for his work on the O. J. Simpson trial. Mr. Spada, left, will inherit a State Police agency made more productive and efficient by Dr. Lee. Judge Spada was raised in Hartford, and he graduated from the University of Connecticut School of Law. Paul Zielbauer (NYT)

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